The Pera Palace in the Face of Globalization

According to Serife Genis, in her dissertation on the re-imagination of Istanbul in a changing and globalizing world, one of Istanbul’s strongest features was it’s cultural diversity (1). That being said, the city in a historical perspective has always attracted people from all corners of the globe, for the purpose of seeing the city, and what better place to stay than the city’s most luxurious hotel? Even for those who could not afford to stay in the hotel as guests, it is a must-see destination for it’s rich history and wealth of stories. 

While the Pera Palace 1990s seemed to be little more than a hallowed hall of dusty curtains and frayed, faded carpets, the hotel still possessed this inexplicable magnetism, this allure that consistently brought visitors in through its grand doors to see the Palace for what it was—the grounds of tremendous political change and cultural advancement from just a few decades earlier (1). 

1. Genis, Serife. Re -Imagining Istanbul: Globalization and Urban Change, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ann Arbor, 2004.